Barbarous: Family Secrets

GameHouse est connu pour ses time management de qualité. Leur formule fonctionne et ils l'appliquent désormais à toutes les sauces. Le rythme, les mécaniques, l'ambiance et la difficulté restent inchangés. Il est question de passer un moment détente, sans se prendre la tête, et suivre une aventure aux dialogues et animations légères et humoristiques. Mais je dois reconnaître que ces derniers temps, entre la collection école de magie et taverne médiévale fantastique ils me régalent tout particulièrement ! On retrouve ici Emyr et sa bande de joyeux lurons qui doivent à nouveau faire face aux dangers qui menacent. Entre guerres des races, prises de pouvoirs, jalousies et fantômes du passer, la troupe a de quoi s'occuper. Ils parcourent donc 7 univers / tavernes afin d'éclaircir et mettre un terme à tout ce chaos. Encore une fois les ambiances et personnages sont vraiment, vraiment, très agréables, à l'image des deux précédents volets. Pour résumer : 60 niveaux 60 rats à dénicher 7 tavernes 2 niveaux de difficulté des récompenses Un poil de farming cela dit pour quelques succès qui me laisse à penser qu'il est triste de vouloir ainsi forcer la durée de vie de leur jeu qui est, de base, déjà tout à fait respectable. Mais je ne leur reproche rien et je vous recommande ce nouvel opus sans souci ! La fin laisse en suspens une suite vraiment très intrigante que je ne manquerai CERTAINEMENT PAS d'adopter ! :)

[b]Note:[/b] A copy of this game was gifted to me by a wonderful friend. ^^ [i]Barbarous: Family Secrets[/i] is an adventure, time management game developed by SQRT3 and published by GameHouse. It is the third game in the [i]Barbarous[/i] series although it is not necessary to have played the previous two games, as a quick summary of events from the previous games are mentioned. As usual, you take on the role of Emyr, a former warrior who now runs a tavern. He recently discovered that his wife, Kintara, is alive, thanks to the information given to him by Lysella, Kintara's sister. Emyr and Lysella set off on their journey and quickly find Kintara in another world, an underwater one in which Kintara has total amnesia, not recognizing her husband or sister. Thus, it's up to Emyr to get Kintara to remember. Also, other events are happening, such as Gwen, Emyr's and Kintara's daughter, ruling the Northern Kingdom and the problems that are happening there and the return of McArthus, Emyr's rival who disappeared at the end of the previous game. It makes you wonder how all this craziness will resolve itself, but I'll stop my synopsis here to avoid story spoilers. XD As for the gameplay, you can choose from among the usual three difficulty levels: relaxed, normal, or hard. (For review purposes, I chose to play on normal mode.) There are a total of 60 levels, and in each level, you have to serve all of the customers by completing their orders. Also, each level has a rat (the equivalent of the mouse from the [i]Delicious - Emily[/i] games) to find, and most levels have some sort of mini-game that occasionally pops up. In addition, there's a special task, like having to talk to certain NPCs. You can earn up to 3 mugs (the equivalent of stars) from fulfilling customers' order, 1 "rat" from finding the rat, and 1 crown from completing the special task. These mugs, rats, and crowns are transformed into diamonds, which can then be used to purchase board game items, purely for cosmetic purposes. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3213793886 Of course, there are lots of Steam/in-game achievements, and they count towards a user's global total. Now that I've gone over the story and gameplay, I'll move onto my thoughts. It's probably no secret for those who have read my reviews of previous time management games by GameHouse (please check out some more of my time management reviews [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/44702020-The-Introverted-Gamer/list/112841/]here[/url]) that I'm a fan of these games. Thus, I was very excited to see [i]Barbarous: Family Secrets[/i] arrive on Steam, and I had to play it almost immediately. :D Getting that out of the way, I enjoyed the story. I liked seeing Emyr and his family and friends again, off on another adventure. Also, it was great to finally meet Kintara, as she was only mentioned in the previous two games. Of course, it is troubling when Emyr learns that Kintara has lost her memory, but as you can guess, things on that front quickly get resolved. It was very enjoyable to witness the banter and witty conversations among these characters as they try to solve their problems and save the day. Also, I really enjoyed watching the cutscene at the end, as there's a major huge spoiler in which [spoiler]an unexpected character from another GameHouse game appears[/spoiler]. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3213794520 As for the gameplay, I encountered no technical difficulties, and all of the achievements unlocked for me. However, there are some that require grinding since most likely, you won't be able to unlock them all on a first playthrough. Thus, you'll have to replay certain levels to get any missing achievements. While I don't mind this aspect too much (since it didn't take me that long to obtain any remaining achievements), it can feel a bit annoying if you simply want to play through the levels from beginning to end. In regards to the art, the game retains the same style as in previous installments. It has that delightful, cartoony style with the use of bright, vibrant colors. The sprites and backgrounds are drawn and colored well. Although some characters and places are the same, there are new characters and places, too, to add some variety to the mix. With the music, the tracks are the same as in previous [i]Barbarous[/i] games. Although they fit well in their respective places and give off that adventurous theme, I wish that there had been a couple of new tracks for a change of pace. Overall, would I recommend [i]Barbarous: Family Secrets[/i]? If you're a fan of time management games and especially the ones published by GameHouse, then you'll probably enjoy this one lots. It's a great continuation to the [i]Barbarous[/i] series, and I had lots of fun experiencing the story and playing through the levels. However, I need to point out that for the asking price, this is simply way too pricey. I know that on GameHouse's site, it's priced the same. However, for the number of hours I spent, it would be much better to wait for a half price sale. Around $10 usd is a much fairer price than the $20 usd current price, and I pointed out this issue with [i]Delicious - Cooking and Romance[/i]. I'm not sure why the publisher feels that the $20 usd price point is justified since I don't think any major improvements or changes have been made to the series, and unfortunately, people aren't earning more money. Anyway, I hope that the publisher addresses this point rather than ignore it, and despite my issues with the price, I did enjoy the game and feel that it's worth getting. ^^ [quote]For more detailed, high quality reviews like this, please follow [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/44702020/]The Introverted Gamer[/url], prioritizing heart and soul always. ^^[/quote]

[code][url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/33025671-Missi-the-Achievement-Huntress/] Please see my curator page for more games that are well worth your time[/url][/code] [b]Approximate amount of time to 100%:[/b] 11 hours [b]Estimated achievement difficulty:[/b] 3/10 [b]Minimum number of playthroughs needed:[/b] 1 [b]Is there a good guide available:[/b] You don't need a guide [b]Multiplayer achievements:[/b] No [b]Missable achievements:[/b] No [b]Grinding Achievements:[/b] A few are a little bit grindy, but not really [b]DLC-Only achievements:[/b] No [b]Speedrun achievements:[/b] No [b]Time-gated achievements:[/b] No [b]RNG-achievements:[/b] No [b]Does difficulty affect achievements:[/b] No, you can play on easy and still unlock all the achievements [b]Unobtainable/glitched achievements:[/b] No Yay, a new Barbarous game in this series of time management games! This is the third game in this particular series. You don't need to have to play the previous games to understand the story, but it will help with understanding the minor details. If you have read more of my reviews on the GameHouse games, you know that I love this type of time management game. Fulfilling orders for customers and checking them out, is just so addictive. I recently replayed an older title from this publisher and I'm happy they now have mini-games that are easier to do with a mouse than some of those mini-games in the older titles. In Barbarous: Family Secrets you run a few different restaurants/shops where people come to buy food or items, or even come sit at a table to eat and drink the stuff they ordered. Doing the same action multiple times in a row gives higher bonuses. So you might want to pick up the items for 2/3 customers before serving it to them so you get a bonus for serving people in a row. Or checking out as many customers at once at the checkout. The achievements are easier to collect and takes around 11 hours to get them all. None of the achievements are missable. Most of them you'll unlock for completing the game, watch every cutscene before and after the levels (or go to the menu where you can see which ones you missed and watch them from there), complete every bonus object in every level, and find the rat in every level. There are specific ones for doing Y X amount of times. Those can feel a bit grindy. what helped me is finding a level where you do Y at the beginning of the level and after have done it and wait a few seconds, restart the level. for example at the beginning of level 4 one of the first 3 customers will ask for corn and another of the first 3 will ask for a beer. Those both have separate achievements, so after finishing everything except those kinds of achievements, by just repeating those first 3 customers, it goes rather quickly. I give Barbarous: Family Secrets 4 out of 5 stars.

I'm so grateful SQRT3 are still making games in this genre with wholesome stories and loveable characters, especially with great quality and smooth gameplay! Thanks for a new one and hoping to see even more from the other franchises, too!

This game falls right in line with the other games from GameHouse/SQRT3. The story line is pretty good, although I did notice some typos here and there. It is pretty much what I expected the game to be. A little corny sometimes, I do love these games a lot! lol Without giving any major spoilers, the ending of this game makes it look like we might have a cross-over with another one of my favorite titles from GameHouse! I'm pretty excited to see where that may go. I definitely recommend if you've played any of the other Barbarous games. (or really any other game from GameHouse)

The story carries on to tie all the loose ends that the previous entries have been teasing on, as much as the intrigue has been getting thinner lately. The game mechanics and graphics are quite the same, with a decent addition of quick mini-games for extra score that vary with location the levels are set on. Can't go wrong with cultural references that this franchise serve their players with.

I am a guy in my early 40s - why do I enjoy this so much?

So my wish came true!! Amyr, Kitara and Gwen reunited as one happy family again, it's really such a beautiful story. The fun quirky descriptions when you upgrade the board is really funny, I love how there is a humor in the story and how everythings just fits all together with the previous Barbarous games. I really enjoyed the game, some levels are hard to complete with unnecessary extra tasks to complete in the level. The scenery of the levels was fun to experience and all the different inn's was really fun to play, I feel honoured to be part of this small community of inn keepers!!

This game was really fun! But I wish it was like twice as long, I ran out of levels already :( And there were lots of places the story could've been expanded.